These are sackcloth and ashes days for many - who had hoped for a different election result and who, like me, foretold a very different result which cruelly turned out to be a mirage.

How could they, how could we, get it so wrong? How did we never see it coming - until the Labour behemoth was right on top of everything; until the streets went crazy with careening cars, overladen trucks, people perched perilously? And until the sheer numbers hit home: a Labour majority even bigger than in 2013, in the light of which even a 2,000 reduction in Labour numbers - which a week ago would have been considered a huge failure - would now be considered a victory. But even that was not to be.

We must have been living in a bubble, in a huge echo chamber where we kept hearing our own voices and thought they belonged to many others. Where are the former Labour supporters who vouched they were going to 'choose Malta' and if so, where did so many others who voted Labour come from?

I think we all misunderstand the nature of politics in Malta. We have two tribes, always at each other's necks but, increasingly, these two tribes have come to resemble each other more and more to the point where they are indistinguishable. It is thus much easier to slip from one side to the other.

There was a time when there seemed to be a cultural, social and educational divide between the two sides - but not any more. To hear someone speak in English, for instance, does not automatically denote a PN supporter. The PN has manual workers within its ranks. Being at university does not necessarily denote a PN supporter.

Nor are there political divisions between the two sides: you cannot say Labour is left and the PN is right.

There remain two factors: family and neighbourhood. I believe a huge mass of voters, on either side, vote as their family has always voted. Family ties and links come especially alive at election time. And it all depends as well on where you live. People who live in areas where 30 per cent vote PN and 70 per cent vote Labour obviously have a tough (tougher) time as Labour supporters who live in districts with a PN majority. This is especially keener in the week or two after an election. This week's PL flood in Valletta compares to the PN flood in St Julian's in 2004 if not in 2008.

At the end of it all, the PN in Parliament represents the 135,000 who voted for it. For good or bad reasons, the PN is there on their behalf. Whether they voted PN because that is what their families always did, or because that is what the people around them were doing, or because they hate Joseph Muscat, in the end the Opposition in Parliament represents them and should be defending them and their interests.

135,000 in 2017 is equivalent to the 51,000 suldat tal-azzar in March 1962 - the rock bottom from which any future growth can be plotted. In fact, one of the recriminations one can make is that the 2013 numbers did not grow much by 2017 and this shows up the leadership's failure. The choice of confrontation, which I warned so many times against, can now be seen to have been a tragic mistake. This does not mean that the scandals mentioned so many times over these past months - Panama Papers, Egrant, FIAU, the MaltaFiles - did not take place, even if not everything could be immediately proved.

But the substance of the allegations requires some knowledge of finance and not all people are that savvy. Besides, there are districts in Malta where people are digital-savvy and get their news from smart phones etc while other districts get their news from Super One or TVM. The PN's campaign was smart phone savvy but not really there on mainline news.

Also, the PN kept up a relentless barrage on the corruption issue, whereas the rest of its election manifesto was never really explained, fleshed out and highlighted. In addition, some rather rudimental mistakes were pointed out and were not corrected in time.

The PN campaign then turned out to be a series of repetitive meetings with Dr Busuttil always as the main speaker repeating his pitch over and over again. But so did Dr Muscat. Dr Busuttil compounded his poor showing with the admission of Marlene Farrugia as an almost equal co-head of the Forza Nazzjonali and with the choice of some dubious characters as candidates.

To my mind, there is no doubt that Dr Busuttil must go, together with his team, his assistants, his hangers-on, the PN HQ team, the people angling for a promotion or at least a consultancy in the PN government - in short, the whole caboodle.

When Dr Busuttil replaced Dr Gonzi, the party parliamentary group was shaken up but not the PN backroom team, still staffed, at the TV station, the papers, the party officials - a tired and hackneyed group still trundling out the same tired message. It is the whole party structure that must mercifully be put out of its pain now and new people brought in.

Most importantly, the new leader must be someone who has come up through the ranks - there are many of them: I am not angling for any one person in particular. The party must understand the damage caused when a person, valid though that person may be, is catapulted to the top - much like what happened to the PL (the old MLP) when KMB became party leader.

I know this will not be accepted by those now agitating for Dr Busuttil to remain, especially by those trolls who seem to find fault with what I write whenever I write under my own name but who, curiously, remain silent when I do not sign my piece.

Fortunately, as the result of a recent change, the new PN leader will be voted in by all party cardholders, not just the delegates or the executive. Hopefully, this wider base will stop the rush to re-confirm the present leader who has resigned and will not be panicked into choosing another predestined leader. The sooner this happens, the better for all.

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